Dex alternatives: personal CRMs for people who don't live on LinkedIn

The best Dex alternatives are Mesh if you want a free plan (up to 1,000 contacts), Monica if you want privacy and don’t need anything synced, and Tera Chat if your relationships live in iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram and Instagram on a Mac rather than on LinkedIn. Dex is still the better pick if LinkedIn sync, email and job-change alerts are the point: none of the alternatives below matches its LinkedIn coverage.

For reference, Dex Premium costs $12 a month billed yearly, $16 quarterly or $20 month to month, with a 6-day trial that requires a card and no free plan (Dex pricing, checked 20 October 2026). Tera Chat is our app; we’ve tried to be fair, and we say where others are the better pick. We checked every alternative’s pricing and help pages on the same date.

What does Dex do well?

Dex is the most complete personal CRM for networking, and it’s worth being clear about that before replacing it. By its own description it gathers people from “15+ sources”, merges duplicates and builds one timeline of meetings, calls, emails and messages. Specifically:

• Apps everywhere: iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows, web and a Chrome extension (Dex).
• LinkedIn sync for up to 2,500 connections on Premium and 9,000 on Professional, with a notification when a connection changes roles.
• Messaging sync: WhatsApp by QR code, synced daily; iMessage from the Dex Mac app (beta), synced hourly; Instagram contacts and recent DMs.
• Email and calendar: Gmail, Outlook and Google Calendar, plus meeting notes from Granola, Zapier, an API and an MCP server.
• Keep-in-touch reminders with a cadence per contact, birthdays (for example from a Facebook import), pre-meeting briefs and AI help drafting messages.
• Security claims you can check in Dex’s own product summary: US hosting, encryption at rest, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, and “No ads. No data sold.”

Why look for a Dex alternative?

People usually leave Dex for one of four reasons:

1. Price. There’s no free plan, and paying monthly costs $240 a year for Premium. The trial is six days and needs a card.
2. It’s built for networking. LinkedIn sync, research credits, mail merge and notetaker integrations are great for a job search or a sales career and wasted on keeping up with your college friends.
3. Your data lives in Dex’s cloud. That’s normal for the category, but some people want their relationship notes on their own device or server.
4. Missing networks. Telegram and Signal aren’t among Dex’s listed integrations.

Dex alternatives compared

App	Price (checked 20 Oct 2026)	Platforms	Messaging sources	Privacy model	Best for
Dex (for reference)	Premium $12/mo billed yearly, $16 quarterly, $20 monthly; no free plan	iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows, web, Chrome extension	WhatsApp (daily), iMessage (hourly via Mac app, beta), Instagram DMs, LinkedIn, email, calendar	Cloud, US-hosted; says it sells no data	Networking across LinkedIn, email and chat
Mesh (formerly Clay)	Free up to 1,000 contacts (card required); Pro $10/mo billed yearly or $20 monthly	Web, Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android	iMessage contacts (no message text), WhatsApp, Instagram, email, calendar, X, Facebook; LinkedIn import	Cloud; adds public updates (job changes, news) to contacts	A free Dex-like contact hub
Monica	Self-host free; hosted $9/mo or $90/yr (30-day trial, no card)	Web (native apps planned after v3)	None: manual entry, vCard/CSV import	Open source; never sold or used to train AI	Privacy and a hand-written journal
Tera Chat	App and inbox free; AI with your ChatGPT account or a Claude or Grok API key, or AI Plus at $9.99/mo	Mac only (Apple silicon, macOS 15+)	iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Tinder; Hinge read-only (beta). No email or LinkedIn	Messages and relationship stats stay on your Mac; AI text goes to the AI provider you choose	Relationships that live in your chats
folk	Standard $24/member/mo billed yearly or $30 monthly; 14-day trial, no card	Web, Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android, Chrome extension	WhatsApp (one-to-one chats), email, calendar, LinkedIn extension	Cloud, shared with your workspace	Teams in sales or partnerships
CatchUp	Free (optional tips)	iPhone, iPad; Apple silicon Macs run the iPhone app	None	“Data Not Collected” App Store label	Reminders and nothing else

The alternatives in detail

Mesh: the closest match, with a free plan

Mesh does most of what Dex does for contacts and reminders, and its Personal plan is free for up to 1,000 contacts (it asks for a card at sign-up). Pro is $10 a month billed yearly or $20 monthly. It runs on the web, Mac, Windows, iPhone and, since August 2026, Android.

Where it differs from Dex:

• Job changes come from public data, as “life updates” (job changes, location changes, news mentions), rather than from a LinkedIn sync. LinkedIn appears in its list of import sources.
• iMessage gives you contacts, not conversations. Mesh’s Mac app creates contacts for people you’ve texted, but its help page says it “won’t import any of the content of your messages”. It needs Full Disk Access and Contacts access (what that permission allows is explained in our Full Disk Access guide), and the App Store build doesn’t support it.
• WhatsApp is thinly documented. Mesh lists a WhatsApp integration, but we found no help article explaining how it connects or what it keeps.
• Smarter reminders. Its Reconnect reminders count from your most recent call, meeting, email or message through connected accounts, so reaching out early resets the clock.

Pick Mesh if you want Dex’s shape at little or no cost. More on the product’s history in Clay is now Mesh.

Monica: for privacy, if you’ll do the typing

Monica is an open-source relationship journal. You record notes, important dates, activities and reminders yourself; it doesn’t connect to email, LinkedIn or any messaging app. In return it promises your data is never sold, never used for advertising and never used to train a model, and you can host it yourself for free or pay $9 a month ($90 a year) for the hosted version, with a 30-day trial and no card. A rebuilt version 3 is due before the end of 2026.

Pick Monica if control of your data matters more than automation.

Tera Chat: for people whose relationships live in chat apps (Mac)

Tera Chat is a free Mac app that brings iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram and Tinder into one inbox and drafts replies in your own texting style. It isn’t a networking tool, and that’s the point: instead of LinkedIn and email, it works from your conversations. Every contact gets a relationship health score; missed cues flags questions you never answered and celebrations you missed; fading chats are surfaced before they go cold; and life events like birthdays, new jobs and moves are caught from what people tell you, with one click to Calendar.

Messages, contacts and relationship stats stay on your Mac and are never uploaded to a Tera Chat server. Missed cues and fading chats are worked out on your Mac without AI. AI features, including life events, use your ChatGPT account or a Claude or Grok API key at no charge from Tera Chat, or a Tera Chat AI plan from $9.99 a month.

Pick Tera Chat if you keep up with people over iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram and Instagram and use an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 15 or later. Skip it if you need LinkedIn, email, an iPhone app or Windows: Tera Chat doesn’t offer any of those, and Dex or Mesh will serve you better.

folk: if you used Dex with colleagues

folk is a team CRM. If you were using Dex’s Team plan to share contacts with colleagues, folk’s Standard plan ($24 per member a month billed yearly) adds shared pipelines, email campaigns, a LinkedIn extension and WhatsApp logging for one-to-one chats. It’s poor value for one person keeping up with friends.

CatchUp or Apple Reminders: if you only used Dex for reminders

If the only Dex feature you use is “remind me to call Priya every month”, you don’t need a CRM. CatchUp is free, runs on iPhone and iPad, and lets you set daily to yearly or custom intervals per person. Apple Reminders does the same with a repeating reminder. Neither knows when you last talked, so you’ll sometimes be reminded about someone you saw yesterday.

When is Dex still the better pick?

Stay with Dex if any of these is true:

• LinkedIn is central to how you keep in touch. Ongoing sync of up to 9,000 connections with role-change alerts is something no alternative here offers in the same way.
• You need it on Windows or Android and in Chrome, with the same data everywhere.
• You want email, calendar, meeting notes and messages in one timeline, including Outlook and several email accounts on Professional.
• You want documented WhatsApp and iMessage sync that runs on a schedule (daily and hourly) without you doing anything.
• You automate: Zapier and API access come with Professional, and Dex offers an MCP server for AI assistants.

If your problem is following up after meeting people, our templates for networking follow-ups over WhatsApp and iMessage work with any of these tools.

How to switch from Dex without losing anything

1. Export your data. Dex says you can export or delete your data at any time. Export before your next renewal date.
2. Pick the import route. Mesh’s free plan imports from email, calendar, X, LinkedIn, Facebook and iMessage, but CSV import is a Pro feature. Monica imports vCard and CSV files. Tera Chat doesn’t need an import: its contact list comes from the chats you connect.
3. Recreate your cadences. Dex’s per-contact cadence maps to Mesh’s Reconnect (weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly or Automatic), to Monica’s reminders, or to Tera Chat’s circles and goals.
4. Reconnect your messaging. If you relied on Dex’s WhatsApp or iMessage sync, read which personal CRMs actually connect to WhatsApp and iMessage before you choose, because they read very different amounts.
5. Cancel Dex once you’ve checked the new tool has what you need.

The verdict

Mesh is the best Dex alternative for most people: it’s free to start and covers the same ground, with less detailed messaging sync. Monica is the choice for privacy. Tera Chat is the choice if your relationships happen in chat apps on a Mac and you’d rather the app notice who you’re drifting from. If you’re still deciding between all of them, our comparison of the best personal CRM apps puts them side by side, and personal CRMs for friends covers the non-networking case.